6 June 2016 – Jorge Lorenzo has slammed Andrea Iannone and believes the Ducati rider needs a "hard penalisation", after he was taken out of the Catalan Grand Prix by his rival.

Iannone must start the Dutch TT from the back of the grid but Lorenzo reckons the Italian deserves a tougher sanction, referring to his own one-race ban for causing an incident in the 250cc category in 2005.

"It's unbelievable that Iannone made this mistake again and when he did, instead of saying 'sorry' he asked me if I had an engine failure or something strange happening in this corner," he said.

"I thought it was his fault, but he had this reaction and didn't say sorry.

"There is always one that doesn't understand the risks and that his actions can seriously injure other riders.

Iannone countered Lorenzo's view and says his rival was "very slow" through the corner.

"I braked at the same point as all the previous laps but he was very slow at that moment and unfortunately I made contact with him and we both crashed," he explained.

"It might seem that I came in too fast and that I wanted to pass him but that's not the way it went and we got the confirmation of this by analysing the telemetry data."

Unfortunately Lorenzo was unable to get comfortable during the 15-minute shootout and managed a best time of 1’47.897, some 2.651s off Andrea Dovizioso’s (Ducati Team) pole lap, and only good enough for 11th. He made no excuses and laid the blame firmly at his own feet. This is not the first time Lorenzo has had issues in Assen when the track was between wet and dry, the 2014 race saw him end down in 13th in similar conditions.

Jorge Lorenzo: “It was a heavy crash even though it was a small crash, losing the front, but the corner was fast. The gravel was very close to the track and when I arrived to it I had a very high speed and I rolled through the gravel a lot. A lot of rocks hit me in the neck, on my back and my hip, so I damaged my skin and superficially have a lot of pain, but luckily not in my bones, they are OK so I can race without any problem. I don’t think it had an effect on qualifying, I just didn’t feel safe or comfortable in the rain on wet tyres. I tried my best but I was slow.”